3.2 KiB
3.2 KiB
Name:
The Splintered Snake
Type:
Inn & Lodging House (with a ground-floor taproom)
Location:
Brefield, Falduhir — off the lower end of Smelters' Row, where the tavern district thins into miners' boarding.
Description:
- A tall, narrow timber lodging house wedged against the rock, its soot-darkened front leaning over the switchback street. Three floors of let rooms above a low, smoke-stained taproom.
- The sign is a coiled snake split lengthwise down a wood grain that never took paint right — locals say the carver's hand slipped and he left it, and the name stuck.
- Warm and close inside: the 26-hour shift rotation means there's always someone asleep upstairs and someone drinking downstairs. Bells from the 9-Bell Town mark the hours through the walls. Smells of coal-smoke, wet wool, and barley.
Lore & Role in Brefield:
- A working travelers' house — cheap beds for transient labor, drummers, and the occasional inspector or "assessor" passing through on Benton business. Anonymous by design; nobody asks a guest's trade.
- That anonymity is exactly why a House of Suits Overview agent chose it. The party lodges here — and so did Hierophant Vezra Gearbloom - Obsidian Archives, two doors down the same hall, watching them the whole time.
- (Session 10) On returning to Brefield, the party checked in here with the rescued dragon Tir'nael in tow — Wren Maddox - Brefield took a twenty-gold deposit and five gold a night, and Odatina signed a waiver for any damage. Realizing the reducing magic on Tir'nael would soon fail, they moved him to the stables out back.
Ownership & Management:
- Run day-to-day by Wren Maddox - Brefield, a harried keeper who values quiet custom and asks no questions — or so it seems. She didn't fail to notice the man in the room down the hall. She rented him the room and watched the party for him. The keeper is the House of Suits Overview eyes in this house.
Notable Features & Rooms:
- Vezra's Room — the let room Vezra took two doors down from the party's. Abandoned mid-cover, never tossed, still holding his disguise kit, field map, letter, and coded ledger. (The scene the party is about to search — see the room note for clue tiers and the desk trap.)
Plot Hooks & Adventure Seeds:
- The dread beat: the party's surveillant wasn't watching from across the city — he was down the hall the whole stay. And the answer to "who else here was paid to look the other way?" is the keeper herself — Wren Maddox - Brefield wasn't paid to look away; she was paid to look.
- The guest ledger and Wren's key-ring tie her to Vezra's Room — and to Magistrate Corvin Hale - Brefield's door, whom she also watches. Catch her in either and both threads open.
Notable NPCs:
- Wren Maddox - Brefield, Innkeeper (Human, ~30) → The keeper who let Hierophant Vezra Gearbloom - Obsidian Archives his room and watched the party for him. Secretly the House of Suits Overview in-town courier and the watcher on Magistrate Corvin Hale - Brefield. The safe house was never safe.